


Dadcord and Daughtertale

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Family, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-22 22:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Lisa comes home late, and Atticus is waiting.
Relationships: Alec | Regent/Aisha Laborn | Imp
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

Lisa keyed through the seventeen-digit entrance code to the building’s back door, made her way up seven flights of stairs through the carefully-memorized gaps created by the camera’s rotations, then bribed the agent guarding her door to refrain from reporting her latest late-night absence.

The necessary precautions taken, Lisa stepped into her apartment, flicked on the lights, and stopped in place when Mr. Snugglemuffin meow’d at her from Atticus’s lap.

“While I applaud you ingenuity, I would have applauded more loudly if you had noticed more than a single layer of security, daughter.” He motioned to the other armchair beside him, the other giving behind-the-ear scritches to the scarred-up tomcat Lisa had finally adopted after it snuck into her apartment for the fiftieth time. “I also believe we need to have a talk about your attire.”

Lisa shrank a little and tugged at the bottom of her suddenly-too-small crop-top. “Or we could not. It’s late, I’ve got school and you’ve got work, and we both need our—”

Atticus cut her off with a cluck of his tongue. “Let’s not pretend like either of us care about your school or my work. The world will not fall apart if I skip a board meeting, and I know for a fact that you would be failing if not for your gratuitous application of blackmail.”

Lisa narrowed her eyes. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Atticus rolled his eyes. “It means that most people will not think less of you for being unable to remember the meaning of ‘soh cah toa.’”

He held out Mr. Snugglemuffins. “Now, let us talk.”

Lisa reluctantly walked over, accepted the cat, and sat down in the other armchair.

For a few moments, the only thing in the air were contended purrs.

Lisa broke first. “I only bought extra clothes because the seasons are changing and I want to be one of the cool kids.”

Atticus waved his hand dismissively, silver rings glittering in the soft yellow lights. “That is a lie, and your pawning of material goods at above-market prices to ignorant children in an attempt to acquire starting capital is not what I spent forty seven minutes on a couch petting the rat you call a pet for.”

“Mr. Snugglemuffin is a cat, not a rat. Weird how a guy who can make a chair which adjust automatically to the precise level of tiredness in his ass can’t tell the difference between a plague carrier and the thing that eats it,” she shot back.

Atticus’s jaw bunched. “It is equally strange that a girl who has received the finest education money can buy would resort to such base language and vague pronouns. Such action could be indicative of resources better used elsewhere.”

Lisa snorted. “Any time you want to stop paying grad students to try and teach me what a gerund is you’re more than welcome to. Also, you’re not my real dad, so let’s not pretend like I owe you shit for your ‘gifts.’”

“Your real father is currently going through a messy divorce while working as a plumber at Edwin’s Institution for the Gastrointestinally Challenged. I am a millionaire. I think both of us are happy that I have nothing in common with him.” Atticus pulled out a folder and flipped it open to a printed spreadsheet, with a number of cells highlighted in red. “What is more important than your atrocious speech patterns is how you have missed curfew no fewer than eighteen times in the past month. Would you care to explain yourself?”

Lisa scanned the spreadsheet, then shrugged. “Your numbers are off. Might want to check whoever you have watching me on Wednesdays, they’re really shit at their job.”

Atticus closed the folder and pulled out a binder. “Thank you for making me aware. After carefully considering the potential meaning of your discretions, I have decided that direct interference is necessary.”

Lisa’s hands froze. Mr. Snugglemuffin _mrrow’d_ in confusion at the lack of pets. “No, no it isn’t. It really isn’t.”

“While growing up, you may begin to experience some changes,” Atticus began, flipping open the binder. “These changes may include, but are not limited to, extreme mood swings, previously atypical desires, and the development of personal habits which may substantially disturb your normal schedule. It is important to resist the urge to fight these changes, as such actions are both futile and—”

“Oh my god, no, I’m not talking about this, I’m not talking about it with you, and I’m not talking about this with you at one in the morning. Bye.” Lisa stood up, took a moment to adjust her grip on Mr. Snugglemuffin, and left for her room.

A few minutes later she returned, Mr. Snugglemuffins sound asleep in her arms, and sat back down in her seat. Atticus pulled out a key ring and held them out. When Lisa tried to take them though, he lifted them just out of reach.

“Sometimes, the world does not make sense. The urge to force it to, to bring the idiotic masses to heel under a single, perfect system, can be overwhelming. The mind-boggling stupidity of those masses, however, prevents such plans from succeeding. Instead they must be convinced that your way is the best way, and they must think that they have come to that conclusion on their own.”

He looked Lisa in the eye and dropped the keys into her hand. “I will not stop you from attempting to warp the establishment to fit your vision of a more perfect world. I do, however, request that you pursue your goals in safe, sane, and effective manner.”

Lisa’s fingers curled closed. “You’re talking about world domination.”

Atticus grimaced. “I just explained why world domination is impractical. I am talking about exercising limited control through legitimate channels because that is what works.”

“You thought I was going out and...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “What did you think I was doing?”

Atticus began extending fingers. “In decreasing order of likeliness, I believed you were engaging in recreation social drug use, robbing people, having sex, acquiring the political secrets necessary to begin manipulating business regulations, and engaging in some sort of charity work.” Once all five were extended, he dropped his hand. “For the sake of brevity, I have omitted that which seems less plausible.”

“So you decided to address the fourth most likely thing you think I’ve been doing at night?” she asked slowly.

He raised an eyebrow. “Jeanne has informed me that you can now buy an A grade from no fewer than three of the teachers in your school. I consider it unlikely that you would place yourself in undue danger with regards to either substance use, partner choice, or attempts to nurse puppies back to health in a gross misuse of your talents.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks Dad. Good to know I’ve got free rein to fuck all the boys and girls now.”

Another silence settled, this one a tad less tense.

Eventually Atticus stood up. “It is late, and I intend to retire. Simply know that I request either you take a guard along on your late-night outings or that your wear the vest, and that I would prefer that you do both.” He glanced at the grandfather clock. “Have a pleasant morning.”

Lisa watched him go. Once he was out the door, she put Mr. Snugglemuffins to the side, went over the couch, and picked up the binder.

“How to Establish an Espionage Team,” she read aloud. After a second she shrugged and tucked the binder under her arm. “Can’t be more boring than Huxley.”


	2. Espionage, Rare Meat, and History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Atticus takes Lisa out to dinner, where she's disapointed.

Paul Robeson had seated many people in his time as the host at _De L'ambassadeur_. All of those people had been rich. Many had been powerful. Some had been world leaders. He treated them all with the same, somewhat-disdainful air he treated everyone else with. The expression came part and parcel with the position, and as much as the new waiters and waitresses thought that respect made for good service Paul knew better.

The clientele who spent hundreds of dollars on a fifty dollar fish didn’t want respect. They had that. Instead they wanted to return to the past, where they could pretend like they were just a regular person who happened to get lucky instead of someone born into money. The thousand-dollar tips didn’t come from exceptional service, they came because the rich had, for a moment, had the experience of being something other than themselves. They had that experience that came without downsides of being poor, without having to check the number on the side of the menu, a display of casual hypocrisy that had caused more than a few to turn in their two week notice.

Paul had seen old money and new money, young money freshly made on the back of technology and ancient bills that had their roots in the parts of American history that people didn’t talk about around him, and none of it impressed him.

None of it, save for Atticus Bramsworth and his infuriating daughter.

Lisa was currently staring at a painting on the wall. “The painting’s fake and the steak's raw.”

Atticus finished his mouthful of asparagus and glared across the table. “It is medium rare, not raw, and that is a print, not a fake.”

“It’s not the actual painting so it’s fake, and medium rare is a fancy way of saying a vessel for salmonella.” Paul had seen more than his fair share of entitled brats. A few glasses of champagne to the face and eventually most of them learned to sit down, and those that didn’t learn were security’s problem.

Lisa, however, managed to be just enough of a pill to be irritating while also somehow managing to avoid breaking any individual rule of social dining. She’d broken plenty of the weaker waitstaff however, and for that she had Paul’s eternal thanks.

Atticus put down his silverware and folded his hands in his lap. “We’ve been over this, Lisa. Rare is the cooking method of those who are preparing to engage in cannibalism, and well-done is for those without access to adequately skilled cooks. While you may personally lack the ability to use the stove as something other than a branding iron, others are not so incompetent.”

“Don’t use my inability to shred a cabbage to direct the conversation away from the fact that my steak is undercooked and the second best part of dinners here is gone.” She looked up to Paul. “Why’d you screw up my order, Paulie?”

“When the lady asked for a steak well done, I instructed the chef to take the greatest care. If the lady would like a different dish, I could ask the chef to make some mac’n’cheese. Without the bread topping if she so wished,” he said neutrally.

Lisa sucked in a breath and Paul swore he saw the corner of Atticus’s lips twitch.

“But seriously, where’s the painting?” Lisa pressed.

Atticus’s fingers twitched. Lisa was focused on Paul, but he saw the motion. In between eye blinks he thought back to the moment the painting had been taken down, the caginess of the manager when Paul had burst into his office demanding to know what precisely had happened to it, and Lisa’s initial reaction to seeing the Framers in oils.

Paul put together pieces and said, “It is being prepared for a showing.”

“When will it be back?” Lisa pressed.

“Paul does not dictate the policy of the restaurant,” Atticus interrupted. “Now please, decide whether you wish to eat or wish to wake up hungry some time later tonight.”

Lisa groaned and pushed her plate away. “Chicken and Caesar. Please.”

Paul bowed and stepped back, out of the private room and into the marginally less-exclusive main room. He made his way through the kitchen, dropping a quick word to the line, and made his way to the manager’s office.

Inside, Rey Andino looked up with bloodshot eyes and bared teeth. “What?”

“Atticus was the one who purchased _Signing_ , wasn’t he?” Paul said.

“Scream it from the rooftops, why don’t you?” Rey hissed, making two sharp motions with his arm.

Paul stepped further into the room and closed the door firmly. “Why not? It would certainly cut down on the break-in attempts.”

Rey groaned, collapsing over his desk. “Do you have any idea how much shit I’d be in if people knew I was willing to sell at all? It’d be feuds, asking what other shit’s for sale, death threats, a whole thing I don’t want to deal with.”

He peered up from his arms. “Officially, the _Signing_ is going to go ‘missing’ while getting cleaned, and if anyone asks the Van Gogh's always been there. Get it?”

Paul considered the words, then nodded. “I understand. Thank you, Rey.”

He waved his arm dismissively. “Go do your job. That’ll earn your salary, and I like that idea more than thanks.”

Paul came back with the salad, endured a few more barely-acceptable insults, returned a few of his own, and after dessert assisted Atticus with his coat.

“It is the lady’s birthday, is it not?” he whispered, adjusting the cloth on the smaller man’s shoulders.

Atticus buttoned his coat and stepped away, cane clicking against the floor. “It is.”

Paul nodded, moving after him. “Lisa quite liked that work. A tad large for most apartment buildings.”

“Most, yes, but there is a penthouse downtown where it would fit,” Atticus qualified.

Paul raised his eyebrow. “A penthouse quite close to the college.”

Atticus stopped and looked up at Paul. “Are you implying something, Mr. Robeson?”

“Only that I suspect great attention has been paid to this particular piece, and that I suspect it will continue to provide joy.” Atticus stepped forward and held the door with a single arm. “Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Concord.”

Atticus left without a word, stalking over to where Lisa was already waiting by the car. Paul watched them go, then pulled out his phone.

“Siri, what is the current location of _Washington Crossing the Delaware_?”

Birthdays came around every year, after all.


	3. An Unfortunate Engagement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ..or why Atticus needs to go to the Improper Workplace Conduct seminars.

Atticus opened the velvet box. Inside was a simple gold ring with a diamond roughly the volume of a quail egg shaped into a perfect sphere set in it. “Jeanne, will you marry me?”

“Absolutely not. I hereby resign my position,” said Jeanne, face impassive while her heart went from a comfortable and healthy sixty beats per minute to just under one hundred and twenty. She bemoaned the fact that she would no longer get to see Atticus’s lovely hands sharpening a pencil with a knife while verbally dissecting a hapless business competitor, but she drew a firm line between work and play, and a marriage proposal was certainly the latter. She was quite happy with her current arrangements, and frankly speaking Phillip was more man than any one woman could handle.

Thank God for Fortuna.

Atticus sighed, closing the velvet box and placing it discreetly out of sight. “Please consider my offer rescinded. May I immediately rehire you?”

“I want a ten thousand dollar yearly bonus, ten weekly therapist visits, and an explanation,” Jeanne said.

He grimaced. “Fifty thousand, paid vacation, and no explanation.”

Things were quite horrible then. “Fifty thousand, you will be required to attend separate therapy sessions, and deliver the explanation promptly. I’m sure Doctor Sarr would be more than pleased to acquire an administrator of my abilities.”

Atticus spun around, staring at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Jeanne knew better than to interrupt him while he was pondering, and though she was no longer his employee she could still respect his rules. Could, and should. The last senator who had tried to interrupt him during his dramatic moments had received a lucrative position as an executive in a ringworm research company with its headquarters in Antarctica. Rumor said that you could still hear his stuttering acceptance on the thirteenth floor if the moon was full, but Jeanne knew that was just Atticus’s monthly review of his greatest victories.

“I believe Lisa needs a mother.”

After suppressing a short rant about the inherent sexism of the statement, Jeanne said, “What brought this on?”

Atticus spun back around. A projection screen rolled down one wall. “Many things.”

He stood up and gestured at the wall. A series of pie charts, each roughly the size of a quarter, appeared in rapid succession, each broken into several dozen different irregularly-proportioned slices, a data set of such minutiae that only a truly neurotic individual would bother examining it in detail. “I’ve kept careful track of how Lisa spent her time as a child, and how that time expenditure has changed over time,” Atticus said, staring at what seemed to Jeanne more a modern art piece than display of useful information. “While I expected some limited decrease in personal interaction between us, the gap in father-daughter bonding time between the ages of eighteen and nineteen is proportionally several degrees of magnitude larger than any previous years’.”

Atticus snapped his fingers, and all but the black slices faded away, growing slightly. “Furthermore, my intelligence on her extracurricular activity has grown more and more speculative. There are entire weekends where I receive no more than a single text, and after you stepped down no one has been able to stand being her bodyguard for more than one week at a time.”

The slides changed again, fading to black, then transitioning into an oil painting of himself and Lisa, him dour as a rainstorm, her smiling much in the same way a fox might when in confronted a cornered prey animal. Atticus sighed, staring up at the projection, oblivious to the raw hatred spilling off of his former assistant executive. “She has grown so very far distant. What happened to my...”

He turned to Jeanne. “Daughter? Is daughter the correct word here?”

 _Brat is actually the perfect term_. “I believe she is simply growing up,” Jeanne said.

Atticus frowned. “Growing? She’s already too tall. We need to stop this at once.”

“Emotionally, sir,” Jeanne interjected before her former employer began placing orders for hormone suppressors. “I believe that she is attempting to develop her personality independent of you.”

“I’m an excellent role model.”

She’d hit his pride. Dangerous territory, even for a former employee. “Your qualifications aside, perhaps she doesn’t wish for a role model. She may wish instead to discover things on her own, to seize knowledge independent of assistance.”

“We already discussed the espionage ring. No this must be something different.” Atticus walked back to his desk, opened up a laptop approximately as thin as a clipboard, and began typing out his forty-character password. “You may leave now.”

Jeanne listened to Atticus type for a few moments longer, contemplating her odds of making it out of the building alive or unmortified.

Then she stepped up to the front of the desk, put a single finger on the top edge of Atticus’s laptop, and pushed it shut. “I believe you are not being honest.”

Atticus looked up with a peculiarly calm look that usually preceded the beginning of the ‘bust’ part of the boom/bust cycle of the market. “Explain yourself.”

“You are focusing on the minutiae of the situation at hand in order to avoid confronting the banality of your fears, sir,” Jeanne stated bluntly. “You’re afraid that Lisa will leave you, and you’re attempting to find a way to act where you can plausibly deny that your primary motivation is the fear that someone is going to abandon you for reasons you don’t understand.”

After a pause, Jeanne stepped back from the desk. “Again.”

In the ensuing silence, Jeanne mourned the fact that she hadn’t properly updated her will in almost two months and that the latest additions to her collections of strap-ons would be sent to her lovers with an incomplete inventory.

Atticus turned away. “See Financial for your raise. I will acquire a psychological health professional on my own time.”

Jeanne bowed to the back of his chair and left the office on shaky legs.

Nothing like a brush with utter humiliation to get the blood flowing in the morning.


	4. The War for Marshmallow-Free Sweet Potatoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas with the Bramsworths, Laborns, Heberts, and a Vasil.

There were a number of reasons the Heberts usually attended someone else’s dinner on Christmas.

Part of that was because they didn’t have a lot of family themselves. Gran had passed away in Taylor’s final year of high school and Danny had been an only child, leaving that branch of the family more or less barren save for some third- or fourth-removed cousins. The relatives they were supposed to inherit from Annette hadn’t kept in touch after the accident, and as a result the number of people who Danny and Taylor could claim as kin had fallen to just each other, a sort of isolation that only really made itself apparent in the winters when everyone else put up obnoxious lights, made travel plans of varying levels of impossibility, and otherwise complained about their wealth of blessings.

Another complication was that while neither of them were hopelessly incompetent in the kitchen, neither of them were they particularly skilled. The Hebert menu consisted of bland Italian food for the most part, day in and day out, and while they could always go out for Chinese food there was something unusually depressed about being the only two people eating silently in a restaurant full of merry cheer.

They weren’t the only people so afflicted. Rachel lived alone, and her culinary skill began and ended with the microwave. Alec spent as much time away from home as humanly possible, and his favorite cooking utensils were a credit card and his smartphone. The less said about Brian’s parents the better, and while he wasn’t a bad hand in the kitchen he tended to specialize in the sort of kale stew which added a week to your lifespan and made any tongue that touched it curl up and die.

Lisa, meanwhile, knew how to make omelets and ramen with a hotplate, Atticus knew how to julienne cabbage in less than ten minutes with a butcher’s knife, and together (with help) could put together a meal for ten with a minimum of difficulty and an unbelievable amount of bickering.

“You will not turn the vegetable dish into dessert,” Atticus said, staring at Lisa from one side of the oven, a stick of celery pointed threateningly up at his daughter’s face.

“Yes, I will, and you can’t stop me because everyone else in this kitchen wants it,” Lisa shot back, the bag of marshmallows already torn open and held threateningly over the pan of mashed sweet potatoes, lovingly seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, and walnuts by Atticus earlier that afternoon, only a few inches away from being covered in artificial sweetener, bleached sugar, and unpronounceable preservatives.

“My home is a benign dictatorship, not a democracy” Atticus shot back, eyes flicking to the side. Danny was stirring together what would eventually become the gravy, and Taylor had finished the stuffing and was now supervising Brian’s mashing of potatoes. “I assume that none of you actually support this traitor to the house of Bramsworth?”

“No.” / “Yes.” / “No.”

Lisa flashed Taylor a smile and tilted the bag a little more, a move which tightened the lines on Accord’s face a fraction more. “Thank you, Taylor, I knew I could count on you.”

“As the dictator of House Hebert, I veto her support of marshmallow on sweet potatoes,” Danny said, keeping his eyes on the pan. “Taylor, can you get me the flour?”

Brian lifted his masher and tapped it against the side of the pot, loosening the clumps of potato back into the warm, creamy whole. “I second this motion, leaving the motion three to zero. The patriarchy wins again.”

Another tilt, and the white delectables shifted this time. Atticus’s hands tightened around the celery stalk, and for a moment the only sound in the kitchen was everyone else going about their business, doing the work necessary to feed a pack of teenagers, two adults, and ensure the kitchen didn’t end up destroyed afterwards. Amidst the cacophony these two stood still, content in the fact that they’d both finished up all their other work and could let the inferior cooks finish up the rest of the work.

“Lisa, put down the marshmallows, in a literal sense which means that they all remain in the bag and rest upon the counter to your immediate left and not upon the sweet potatoes,” Atticus said, enunciating every syllable. “If you do, I’ll let you stab the pudding until you figure out which slice has the ring.”

“You always put it in the middle so you can cut it into pieces which have the same volume,” Lisa shot back. “I want a pony.”

Atticus _tsk_ -ed. “The last pony you got ended up being resold to the child of a senator on credit. You don’t want a pony, you want the social clout having a pony can get you.”

Lisa plucked a marshmallow out of the bag and bit down. “That isn’t a no.”

“I am not getting you another pony,” Atticus stated.

“What sort of father are you?” Lisa took a step back, aghast, and that was all the opening Atticus needed.

Two steps, fast as the fencing tutors demanded, one cut across his body to defend his delicacy from the rain of marshmallow, and Lisa found herself without a hostage an under deadly threat of being impaled by health food.

“My god,” Brian said, the passion of a thousand high school gym teachers made manifest in his voice. “You have bested your daughter. Congratulations. Can one of you get the plastic off the stove before it melts?”

Atticus’s arm dropped down and he turned to face Brian. “It’s an electric stovetop, you imbecile.”

“It only conducts heat through metal, the plastic will be fine,” Lisa added, crossing her arms and pouting. “Why are you such a kill-joy?”

“Haven’t you finished your work yet, stove-hand?”

“As in, a person who would never put their hand on an electric stove because you’re afraid it would burn you.”

“Educate yourself on home decor, proletariat scum.”

“Go to The Home Depot, pick up a summer job, and don’t come back until you can tell us when ‘puce’ is an acceptable color.”

“If you answer is anything other than ‘for bannisters in conjunction with rose white,’ you will be forbidden from entering these premises ever again.”

“He’s not joking.”

“I never joke.”

This time the kitchen was quiet enough to hear water drip from a faucet, at which point Atticus broke away from his impromptu staring contest with Brian to ensure that he didn’t lose a rounding error on a cent.

Danny leaned over towards Taylor, pouring wine into the saucepan, then a healthy amount into his neglected wine glass. “Are they always like this?” he stage-whispered.

“It’s not out of character for Lisa,” she stage-whispered back, shrugging. “No idea about her dad.”

Brian started ladling the potatoes into a Pyrex pan. “We can all hear you.”

“Lisa and Atticus respect the sanctity of stage-whispering,” Taylor shot back, smiling across the kitchen at Lisa. “Don’t they?”

“Stupid thespian training,” Lisa muttered, tugging on a pair of over mitts. “Stupid kayfabe candid theatre bullshit.”

“Was that breaking character I heard?” Atticus called from where he was rolling brusel sprouts into a stainless steel serving bowl.

“Yes, and what are you going to do about it?” Lisa called back.

“Send the prepubescent dog I had bred for you back to Scotland.”

“You got me a puppy!?”

* * *

_And those who doubt the truth of this scene_

_Might yet understand quite what I mean._

_This is not about Christmas, yam, or decor._

_This is not about Worm or Taylor or anything more._

_Put your mind to it, consider, turn your gaze in,_

_And after you forget me, I hope that you grin._

_Consider how such story comes from you, from the words that you read_

_That to all claims of power I gratefully conceded._

_When you read it is not I who speaks in you head_

_But rather your own voice, whose words oft go unsaid._

_You bring to each story, each poem, each verse_

_A certain type of feeling I cannot rehearse._

_It is this hope beyond hope which I hope to inspire_

_A hope which I hold to hope to set fire._

_For it is not my ramblings which keep the wolves from the door_

_But the words of those around me, the ones I adore._

_The moments of sorrow, of romance, of love_

_The ones from which my dreams are made of._

_It it perhaps too late, but I thank my friends_

_I thank them for loving these odds and ends_

_I thank them for reading this god-awful verse_

_This poem, this story, these syllables perverse._

_I wish them good tidings, good luck!_

_And most of all I wish them a good—_

* * *

“Alec what the _hell_ are you doing!?”


	5. That Semester Abroad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That Awkward Moment when your Dad buys you a bar.

When Lisa’s phone buzzed in the middle of a rousing game of Never Have I Ever that she was certainly winning, she seriously considered simply not answering it.

After glancing at the name of the caller she decided that a ten minute break couldn’t hurt.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Lisa said, stepping back from the table and smiling apologetically. “I need to take this.”

Brian nodded and lifted his glass of water in acknowledgement, Taylor kept staring into her gin and tonic like it was going to bite her, Rachel frowned angrily while reaching under the table to scratch the ears of one of her emotional-support dogs, and Alec shrugged while sipping at his sea breeze. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

“You’re a real charmer,” she shot back, stepping away from the bar and out onto the street. Plausible deniability attained, she swiped open her phone, dropped the smile, and began scanning the London street for potential tails. “Make it quick Dad, I’m at dinner with my friends and I don’t want to keep them waiting.”

“Bold words to say to the person paying for your meal,” Atticus responded, his voice irritatingly unruffled by her demand. “It seems generally unwise to endanger your most reliable source of income.”

“Bold of you to assume I use the card you control for anything other than buying textbooks I don’t read,” she snapped back, glaring at a young passer-by who’d begun to approach her carrying a tabloid. The ensuing quailing seemed genuine enough, and a discreet glance at a display window proved that it wasn’t a temporarily put-on fear. That didn’t mean she _wasn’t_ the tail, but it did reduce the odds.

Atticus clicked his tongue over the phone. “I still find your refusal to use your allowance absurd, but Jeanne also told that I should respect your decision and not lock out the seven cards you have issued under false names.”

“Well that was nice of her,” Lisa said, mind racing as she tried to figure out which of her nine official accounts he’d discovered. It was entirely possible he was also lying to her and actually knew about all of her supposedly-secret reserves of cash, bitcoin, ETF’s, and easily-liquidatable collectables (physical and electronic), but Lisa considered herself an optimist. “I’ll have to send her an edible arrangement.”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to discuss why I’ve called you this morning,” he said, switching from the casual tone Lisa knew was his Swiss-Army knife of conversational means to a more immediately-terrifying octave reserved for hostile takeovers. “Specifically, why are you in England?”

“Shakespeare. I’m trying to get some of that culture you’ve been cramming down my throat.” Lisa turned the corner and kept scanning faces. London was a busy city, and even though she had more than enough cognitive capacity to walk stylishly, watch out for pick-pockets, and silently critique their form while maintaining a conversation with a man who’d have given Fae lawyers headaches that didn’t make profiling people in the space of a glance easy.

Which one had spotted her?

Another tongue click, and this time Lisa had to resist the urge to grimace. Not because she was afraid of someone seeing her less-than-perfectly-composed, but because the little games they played in conversation were usually more fun than this. “You have the artistic taste of a garbage disposal, and the one time I managed to wrestle you into going to the opera you spent the majority of the time attempting to destroy an otherwise-functional marriage. I similarly doubt you went there for the Portrait Gallery, a visit to Oxford, or an attempt on the Crown Jewels.”

For a moment Lisa simply let the cacophony of the London populous fill the dead air, trying to suppress her frustration at not thinking of the last item before she’d purchased her plane tickets out of the country.

“I considered it,” Lisa said eventually, hoping the lie sounded plausible. “Thing is I’m not sure there’s a market for relics these days, and gold isn’t my color. What’s the point of a crown if you’re not going to wear it?” She’d nearly circled the block by now, and Lisa was getting worried. Normally Atticus kept his spies within a fair, discoverable distance of their phone calls, a part of the unspoken arrangement that made it a game and not stalking. So long as she didn’t humiliate them too badly or get kidnapped by Colombian drug dealers, said bodyguards would usually roll over and resign themselves to their position as pieces in the ongoing chess match between Lisa and her father. She’d gotten to know a few of them, and while that made them terrible tails it did make them good teammates when she tried to turn the tables.

As Lisa stepped into a cafe to catch her breath, she began to worry that maybe the tables were getting turned on her.

“Some people find tremendous value in simply holding a piece of history in their hands. A cursory examination of the British Museum will provide more than enough evidence that a patternless collection of nonsense can be considered high art, so long as it’s sufficiently large and old,” Atticus said, and Lisa finally picked up on the background noise in the call. Voices, always raised, sometimes louder, so a public venue for recreation. An undercurrent of clinking glass implied proximity to drinking, presumably alcohol, but since Atticus didn’t imbibe any liquid which wasn’t sparkling spring water and almost no one on the planet had both the raw economic, political, or social power to convince him to spend any amount of time in the company of those truly inebriated, Lisa had to assume that it was a red herring of some sort.

_Goddamnit, give me something I can use!_

“But enough about your wardrobe, what’s up?” Lisa asked, turning the final corner and heading back to the bar. If Atticus was playing hardball, further patrolling around the block wasn’t going to help her figure out how he figured out that she’d skipped the states. Better to enjoy the brief period of freedom before getting politely asked back to the states, refusing, then finding that all of the air traffic in the city for the foreseeable future had been redirected to Boston. “How’s the family, the kids? I know that one daughter of yours is a perpetual handful, but besides that little hellion is everything alright in the Bramsworth household?”

Lisa stepped back into the bar, fully prepared to hang up as soon as Atticus began his trademark rant about not referring to oneself obliquely, then stopped in the doorway and gaped at the sight before her.

Atticus was seated at the bar, wearing a brown suit. That alone violated so many of his principles that the urge to fire off a comment about showing his true colors almost got the better of Lisa, but the fake mustache, overly-thick glasses, and bowler hat kept her dumbstruck. In one hand was his phone, encased in an Arsenal-brand case, while the other was wrapped around a truly monstrous glass of beer.

Atticus maintained eye contact with her as he carefully hung up, put his phone away, and lifted the glass to his lips, draining it of amber liquid in one go.

After pushing the teenager next to her father out of his seat, Lisa leaned in close and hissed, “What the _bloody hell_ are you doing here?”

“Language,” he said, pushing his glass away and staring patiently at the bartender. “Adopting a local dialect, while impressive, does not excuse expletives when they’re not called for.”

“I think it’s called for!” she snapped back, grabbing the half-full glass in front of her and taking an angry sip of the seat’s former occupant’s brew.

While Lisa choked on the mouthful of Fireball Whisky, Atticus accepted a new glass of beer and began playing his eye across the selection of bottles on the bar. “What one thinks and what actually is typically only match up one to one in fantasy, but here your reaction seems well beyond the realm of reasonable. Is it so strange that I would simply want to spend time with my daughter?”

“Yes?” Lisa croaked, tapping her chest twice to clear the last of the burning fluid, shooting him an incredulous glance.

Atticus sighed. “This business of human connection is far more difficult than Doctor Yamada made it seem in her office.”

“Don’t you have something more important to do than creep on your own daughter?” Lisa asked.

As soon as the words escaped her mouth, Lisa wanted to take them out onto the street, deconstruct their definitions into their most basic components, and expunge the resulting Platonic concepts they connected to from the human _gestalt_ in order to most adequately wash the taste of shoe leather out of her mouth.

Atticus finished his beer, put a stack of notes down on the countertop, and stood up. “I wish you a happy twentieth birthday, Lisa. Enjoy the celebration with your friends.”

Lisa let her father walk away, staring at the bar top in hopes that sufficient observation would transfer the tapestry of alcohol stains into her brain.

A few minutes later Taylor stumbled into the seat next to her. “Heyyy.”

Lisa turned to the side and put on a smile. “Hey. How’re you liking your one-hundred-percent legal drinks?”

“Not as much as I thought I would. Was that guy bothering you?” Taylor pointed at the door. “Not the guy you pushed away, the old one. Who was also short. And a fan of Arsenal.” She furrowed her brows, looking at the lonely ice cubes and grapefruit wedge in her glass. “I can’t remember if that’s the good soccer team.”

“They’re like the Yankees,” Lisa offered, pulling out her phone and hammering out a text. “They win all the time, except for the majority of the time, and even though they win more than anyone else that doesn’t mean they’re okay with losing. Everyone outside their fanbase is more or less convinced that any good turn they get is the result of a whole lot of money and corruption, and everyone inside the fanbase is convinced the money and corruption are basically fair and just, all things considered.”

After pondering that, Taylor reached into her glass, pulled the grapefruit wedge out, and chomped down. “Interesting.”

Lisa sighed, pressed send, and stared glumly at the steadily-growing bar at the top of her screen. “Not really, soccer sucks. Anyway—” she stood up “—I think it’s time we hit up a different bar. Come on, you get Rachel, I’ll get Brian, and we’ll go to the first place that serves meat pies. I want some food to go with these drinks.”

Taylor frowned, patting her pockets, blissfully ignorant of the fact that Lisa had entrusted Taylor’s wallet to Brian for safe-keeping. “Don’t we have to pay?”

“Taken care of,” Lisa assured Taylor, slinging one arm around her shoulder and pulling her away, trying not to make it weird while also absorbing what semblance of alright-ness she could from the other girl. “The night’s just getting started.”


End file.
